by Myles Dunhill (@MylesDunhill)
Water Your Waiting For, the latest full-length from Minneapolis-based, The Miami Dolphins, starts off with the sound of a Commodore 64 booting up, however this is no nostalgia trip. After a voiceover introduces the listener to “puppets, humans…dancing sex...anything you could ever want to eat and more” it’s easy to tell what kind of mayhem the band wants you to embrace right in the first minute, and what follows is largely joyous discordant spazz-rock that would sit firmly alongside many other beloved groups from this niche of freewheeling and free spirited slackercore.
As if the Zappa influence of the introduction was going to stop there, on the topsy-turvy "Kill Them All and Take Their Money," declarations of “Oink! Oink! Oink!” transform the track’s climax into an anti-anthem for the defiant buffoon in all of us. Also worth noting is a brief moment of the band working themselves into a frenzy demanding ketchup for their hamburgers on "Protect the Children and Drain Your Boat." Later in the album, either the line “watch your skin melt” or “watch your skim milk” is consistently repeated to which either variation would seem fitting for this group. While on the track appropriately titled "Interlude," several band members showcase their talent of carrying on different conversations simultaneously while drifting into absurdist tangents.
The band’s biggest strength lies in showcasing their dynamic and offbeat songwriting which is executed like Captain Beefheart and Deerhoof taking turns in a Battle of the Bands to which the results sound dementedly delightful and quite charming, like on the track "Great Deals." Most of the time the band fills in the void left behind from groups like Blood on the Wall or even Aids Wolf if they had devoured nothing but uppers. Another cross-pollination of outsider-indie from The Unicorns producing an old Daniel Johnston demo could explain the results of the title track. Yet even amidst cascades of goofy self-awareness, the infectiousness of the band’s spontaneity is staggeringly cathartic and very much recommended for fans of off-kilter unhinged bizzaro-rock.